Quarter 2 Review - 12/13

014 Adaptation – New

 

As an ongoing massive series on the Zola novels, Radio 4 continued with Blood, Sex, and Money.  These were challenging, indeed, and while I liked some better than others, I’m glad I heard them.  My favorite was “Family” adapted by Dan Rebellato.  The theme that pulls the plays together is the narrating voice of Macquart family matriarch Dide (Glenda Jackson) who apparently has a telepathic link with her progeny, who sometimes seem to hear her voice in their heads.  As a narrative device, it actually works pretty well.  “Family” had some really high-class voice talent.  This play focused on a family unit, Aristide (Samuel West) and his feckless son Maxime (John Hefanon).  The play was really well-written, as the audience could always be one step ahead of the characters but not feel lost, and remain uncertain as to the outcome. The dialogue was also quite strong and when paired with the performances and the tragedy of the story, made this a difficult tone to step away from.  Lacking liquid capital, Aristide is marrying off Maxime to a hunchbacked aristocrat.  Aristide’s second wife, Renée (Anna Maxwell-Martin), is horrified.  She and Maxime have been lovers for two years. Her daughter Angélique is actually Maxime’s.  Unfortunately, Aristide overhears them, and his retribution is swift.  Poor Anna Maxwell-Martin has made a career of playing tragic characters, but she does it so well.  Of all the plays with “themes,” this one, of house destroyer, was the most apt and well-illustrated—Aristide’s job is to pull down houses to make way for Baron Haussman’s grands boulevards, a motif that comes up several times in the series.  This play was directed by Polly Thomas.

My second favorite from Blood, Sex, and Money was Lavinia Murray’s adaptation “Lust.”  A previous episode had introduced one of Dide’s grandsons, Octave Mouret, who was depicted as a totally irresponsible cheeky seducer of women.  I had to eat my words regarding Octave and the Ladies’ Paradise department store which he had risen to manage.  After having married the boss and becoming a successful leader of the department store, so successful as to be under the gaze of Baron Haussman himself, Octave is a widower.  His eye suddenly falls on country bumpkin (and utterly honorable) Cendrine who, in a rather surreal sequence, teaches him to feel the pain of the women he sells clothes to, women who kill the babies in their stomachs by lacing their corsets too tightly, who conform to men’s expectations of them.  Her cousin dies of unhappiness because her feckless lover is pandering to Clara, Cendrine’s whorish, spiteful colleague.  Meanwhile, it seems Octave is headed for a fall from a jealous and hurt former lover.   This was directed by Kirsty Williams.